Of Arithmophobia, Alphaphobia, Athazagoraphobia and Long Word I Forgot
by spoonerdog123
Summary: Seven suspicious deaths, one suicide, and two buildings go down in flames - all in the space of thirty-six hours. Who did this, and why? Who died? Give the files a read - but be warned, the chances are you'll never figure it out. Adopt pairing number 2, Yugi X Mahad (sort of), written for the YGO FF Contest, Season 9.75, Round 3. Rated for violence, murder and general scary-ness.


**Warnings:** DarkMagician!Mahad, a fair bit of death and violence. Depending on your interpretation, some characters could be quite OOC.

**Length:** 2,949 words.

**Time Period:** It depends on how you look at what happened, but this could be an AU. It could be set in main canon. If it _is _set in main canon, it takes place after Battle City. Whether it is before or after the Final Duel is up to you.

**Handicap:** _'I must show the story through description – rather than actually explaining what's going on, allow the readers to gradually figure out what happened for themselves. No dialogue, no telling; just a series of settings that should explain what happens.'_

**Feedback:** Is always appreciated (respectful concrits are liked the most, as always) – but this particular time round, I'd like to know a few specific things. First, I want to know if you could actually follow any of what was going on, as I tend to write confusing things, and this one was not only a deliberately ambiguous fic, but also had a bizarre handicap. Second, I'd love to hear if anyone has been able to not only understand but interpret what was going on here, and come up with a theory as to what happened. I doubt that will actually happen to anyone, but it'd be great to hear about it if it _did _happen. I wrote this fic with five equally possible, yet pretty varied explanations in mind, so I can tell you if you got close to any one of them.

* * *

Of Arithmophobia, Alphaphobia, Athazagoraphobia and Long Word I Forgot **  
**  
_As this is a scary story, the author made sure to make all the words not only scary to pronounce, but also with loose meaning of 'scary'! Scary, amiright?_

_Aaaanyway, on with the weirdo definitions:_

_**Arithmophobia:** Fear of numbers, or possibly maths teachers. The reasons behind the latter are common sense, whilst the reasons behind the former are more particular… _

_**Alphaphobia:** Fear of the letter 'A', which seems like a pretty cruel joke. Show this title to an alphaphobe, and they'll run away screaming._

_**Athazagoraphobia:** Fear of forgetting, or being forgotten. I have this phobia._

_**Long Word I Forgot:** I'm sure I put it down somewhere… Wait, I FORGOT IT OH NOOOOO–_**  
**

* * *

This is a piecing together of a story concerning the mysterious "Magician Murders" – the suspicious deaths of seven people out of the eight involved in the opening day sale of the Kame Game Shop, which sold a never before seen coloring of the Dark Magician figurine on that day. The store was razed to the ground by an unknown individual the following night, and the eighth person involved in the sale committed suicide.

The following account was put together from numerous witness accounts, with some artistic license. All individuals involved have been given aliases, as names have not yet been released by the police. 

The author encourages the readers to draw their own conclusions.**_  
_**

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: ZERO**

_In the BC calendar era, the year 1 BC is the first year before AD 1; no room is reserved for a year zero._

And Domino High _burned_ – it would have been spectacular, to say the least. According to witnesses, black and purple flames licked at the walls, inextinguishable, almost invisible in the night. They burned, charred, melted whatever they touched, and soon the building itself began to make the last dying cries, creaks and cracks that were every fireman's nightmare. A handful of young people – students, perhaps – scurried around the wreck, like ants whose nest had recently been squashed.

Kneeling in front of the building, silhouetted in the dim glow from the flames, The Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair screamed. We can only imagine the sort of torment he must have been going through in that moment, but what his involvement actually was in proceedings is to this day a mystery. We do, however, know he then stood, sniffled a bit, and walked back into the flames; utterly ignoring the pleas of those intending to help him. Shortly after this action, the flames vanished, and the building collapsed. Rescuers reported that The Boy was found dead – holding a tiny, charred, once normally – coloured Dark Magician to his lips.

The killer's body was never found.

And so, of the eight individuals, **nothing **remained.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: TEN**

_To reduce something by one–tenth is to 'decimate'. In ancient Rome, the killing of one in every ten soldiers of a cohort (ie a tenth of that cohort) was the punishment for cowardice or mutiny._

The sun **ten**tatively rose over Domino City, only to find that a very strange gathering had accrued in front of the Kame Game Shop. Here on the street corner was a veritable crowd – composed of not only patient children, but teens and adults too. Odder still was their manner of dress; all wore red robes and pointy hats. The majority wore red shoulder pads styled to look like some sort of pointed shoulder armor, and a few held long, green staffs. In short, they were all attempting to look like the 'Dark Magician' advertised on the posters plastered down the street. Only a few were managing to pull this look off; as with many wizard costumes, the rest looked more like failed Harry Potter cosplays.

It should be noted that the Kame Game Shop was selling a special recolour of the normal 'Dark Magician' figure – this was what people had dressed as. The normal 'Dark Magician' has purple armor with pink bands and dark hair, as opposed to this 'Dark Magician' with its red armor with gold bands and grey hair. (1)

At exactly 7:**10**am, The Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair opened the door, his mouth only dropping open for a second before he was absolutely** decimated** by his own eager customers.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: NINE**

_The 'nine bows' is a term used in Ancient Egypt to represent the traditional enemies of Egypt. _

After the initial rush, things slowed to a crawl. Costumed children and adults alike would cue in front of the doors, reemerging from the shop several hours later, clutching their red 'Dark Magician' figurine kits with their many packets of cards. There was so much activity that at one stage The Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair had to call in some of his friends to do the work that he and Grandfather between them could not, and the electronic doorbell's little batteries collapsed and died from overuse.

Even by **9**:0**9**am, the place was still packed, and a crowd of roughly **nine**ty clogged the street. What is important about this particular hour is that one man was not like the others – tanned and thin, dressed in a long cream robe, a white turban, and with a white cloak swishing behind him, he would have cut a distinctive figure amongst all the red that morning – and yet, he seemed to melt in and out of the crowd. Stranger still was the fact that he went _in _with a normally coloured 'Dark Magician' figurine, but came out with a recoloured one. This character has been subject to many conspiracy theories, but to this day no–one has proof of his identity.

According to several witnesses, as this man walked away, he turned back to the building, put his hands together as if in prayer, and **bowed nine times.**

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: EIGHT**

_The_ _set S of all positive divisors of 8 (excluding 8 itself) is S = {1 2 4}. Because the sum of those numbers (1+2+4 = 7) is less than 8, the number 8 is a "deficient number". _

The store 'officially' closed, as it always did, at 3:00pm; however, the last customers were only ushered out at 3:0**8**, leaving the **eight **remaining people to sag against the walls. These were The Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair, Grandfather, and the six helpers: Headband, Albino, Burger World Girl, Best Friend Blonde, Best Friend Blonde's Other Best Friend, and Gamble Lady. Without every person's hard work, the venture would have proved **useless** – the shop would have been swamped, and maybe even forced to close.

They might have talked for some time – they were all friends, after all – but the Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair and his grandfather were exhausted, and soon bid the other six farewell.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: SEVEN**

_Conspiracy theorists like to point out the occasional appearance of the number 7 in terrorist attacks – for instance, Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon on September 11 (accompanied by the collapse of World Trade Center __**7**__), or the infamous 7 July 2005 London bombings… also known as 7/7. _

The Kame Game shop slept lightly for three to four hours, creaking a little as it stood drearily in the warm Domino afternoon, just as it always did. Nothing unusual happened during this time.

At **7**:1**7**pm**, **the Kame Game shop **exploded **in a burst of purple flames, and the Boy with the Tri–Colour Hair was spotted fleeing the building, disappearing from the scene as quickly as he had appeared.

The smoke poured down the street, choking and muffling the wails of alleyway cats; until they fell silent altogether. What was not silent was the shop – it rumbled, roaring as the supporting framework collapsed. A second blast of violet fire reduced the timber to little more than ash, gently blowing in the breeze.

A man who had been just about to enter a club on the opposite side of the road changed his mind, and went to see if he could rescue anyone. He claimed to see someone, who he termed 'IT' – this was another man in what could only be described as full, dark purple Dark Magician regalia, standing before the wreck. According to the witness, 'IT' kept its head bowed as it strode into the night, meaning that its face was hidden by the physics–defying hat, and a nearby 'Dark Magician' poster featuring the red recolour was reportedly licked with purple flames when 'IT' glanced in that direction. The man had never seen the Dark Magician trading card prior to this, so it is interesting that his account of 'IT' matched the Duel Monsters Monster. However, this individual was believed to be drunk at the time he saw 'IT', and so his words were never accepted in the coronary enquiry.

Whether 'IT' existed or not is of course uncertain, but what is known is that with its sighting had come the first killing, the death of Grandfather. The old man was believed to be in the house when it was obliterated.

There were once eight – now there were **seven**, and over the next thirty–six hours, there would only be more deaths.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: SIX**

_The number of feet below ground level a coffin is traditionally buried. As a result, the phrase "six feet under" means that a person, thing, or concept is dead._

To this day, Headband is believed to have been the second to **die**, perhaps killed around 1:00am – however, the body was not discovered for at least nine hours after death. He was left in supposedly unoccupied hotel room **66**, locatedon the **sixth** floor, which he had no key to; in fact, the floor had been vacated for repairs, and the lift would not stop at that floor as a result. Neither the hotel guests nor the staff saw Headband enter the building, and records show that he had never been to the hotel before. However, another of the eight people present at the Kame Game opening was Gamble Lady – a frequent guest at the casino there.

Headband was found sprawled on the king–size bed, part of his left shoulder badly charred and the wall behind his head scorched. The window was untouched, leading some to say that only a magician could have entered.

And now, unbeknownst to anyone, there were **six**.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: FIVE**

_The holy number of Discordianism, as dictated by the Law of Fives. Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris (also known as Discordia), the Greco-Roman goddess of chaos._

One of the reasons that Headband's body went undiscovered was the dramatic death of Gamble Lady, which resulted in absolute traffic **chaos**. According to a large number of terrified witnesses, an unseen force ripped a car off the road, and dashed it several times against a skyscraper. It then slammed the vehicle into the road, and the car was hit by a petrol truck.

An equally large number of witnesses state that the car drove into an invisible barrier of some sort, and was repelled backwards, at speeds faster than what it had approached the barrier at. It was smashed into a skyscraper, then fell in the path of a petrol truck.

It should be noted that many experts have speculated that these witnesses were on drugs, pathological liars, or even paid off by the killer to say such things. We will never know for sure how Gamble Lady died, but it is certain that by the time authorities arrived on the scene at 6:3**5**am, a petrol–fuelled bonfire raged around her car, which had indeed been severely damaged before being hit by a fuel truck. Whatever conclusion you may come to about the cause of death, Gamble Lady would have been dead in seconds – there was no way **f**or her to surv**ive** the first impact.

Due to her involvement with the hotel casino, it has been proposed that Gamble Lady discovered Headband's body before anyone else, and on trying to escape in her car was caught by the killer.

And so there were **five.**

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: FOUR**

_The Chinese, Vietnamese, the Korean and the Japanese are as superstitious about the number four as Western nations can be about the number thirteen. This is because it sounds like the word for "death" in their languages._

At this point, the news would have spread to the ears of the remaining five individuals – The Boy With the Tri–Coloured Hair, Best Friend Blonde, Best Friend Blonde's Other Best Friend, Albino, and Burger World Girl. Witnesses claim that the friends immediately went to Domino High, and attempted to convince the children there for several hours to hand over their recolored Dark Magician figurines. However, this move failed – instead, the murderer was somehow alerted to their presence. A man cosplaying as a normally coloured Dark Magician is believed to have entered the building at perhaps 11:**4**0am, and four of the five victims fled a few minutes later. The body of Best Friend Blonde's Other Best Friend was never found, bar a scorched outline in the wallpaper – the consensus is that the cosplayer was secretly carrying a flamethrower, and that Best Friend Blonde's Other Best Friend would have **died **attempting to hold him off.

The cosplayer did not exit the building.

Only **four **were left, and they would die in rapid succession.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: THREE**

_On most telephone keypads, the "3" key is also associated with the letters "D", "E", and "F". Try saying that out loud._

At **3:33**am, Best Friend Blonde made a rather panicked, somewhat garbled mobile **phone call** to Burger World Girl, at whose house The Boy With the Tri–Coloured Hair and Albino were staying the night.

This call is all that remains of what could have happened to Best Friend Blonde(BFB). The first fifteen seconds are barely audible, as BFB appears to be hiding. He warns Burger World Girl to "get out", and states that "_he_ thinks he's been betrayed, he killed the others, he's in the school, don't go there". Over the next twenty–two seconds, his voice rises in a panic ("Oh no, oh no"), and he screams something incomprehensible. The call is over with a swish, a thud and a click of the receiver – we can only imagine the reactions of The Boy and Burger World Girl. However, it seems that they made some attempt at retaliation, as shown by the death of BWG shortly after the call.

BFB was found – **dead** – at 4:52am, in a phone box, with ten daggers stuck in his back, and his head several metres from his neck. Every one of these daggers was in fact a precious Egyptian artifact, each of them dating to be over three thousand years old.

No museums reported any thefts at this time.

**Three** were now left; they went to face the threat.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: TWO**

_It takes two to start a fight._

At this point, it is alleged that The Boy With the Tri–Coloured Hair led Albino and Burger World Girl into Domino High, with intentions to **confront **the murderer. It seems that the latter did not get very far, as BWG was found in the school carpark at 4:**2**0am.

The manner in which Burger World Girl died is unknown – she seemed to be uninjured, but did not breathe or have a pulse. Playing cards were found at the scene, leading some to believe that she may have attempted to play a card game with the killer. The only other clue at the scene is somewhat dubious – when first discovered, she supposedly held clenched in her hand a recoloured Dark Magician figurine; however, the figurine disintegrated as soon as the building collapsed.

* * *

**COUNTDOWN: ONE**

_Every serial killing has happened on a date divisible by one. _

Albino and The Boy would have had to make their way down a dark corridor, towards the principal's office – where the PA system had accidentally been turned on. The first of the angry shouts was observed from the street at 4:20am, at the same time Burger World Girl's body was discovered – any rescuers trying to get into the school were now repelled by an invisible wall, only adding to the frustration.

Much of the conversation was indistinct, despite the words being transmitted over the PA – however, at one stage witnesses heard an individual (believed to be Albino) clearly yell "Why are you doing this?" – the reply to this question was too soft for witnesses to hear, but after this point The Boy began to cry audibly, over violent noises in the background - eventually, these, along with Albino's pleas, went silent.

Over the PA, The Boy continued to cry; but several times, he was cut off – something was being jammed over or in his mouth. It is unknown whether these cut offs were the result of gagging attempts, threats, or perhaps something… different.

Only three sentences were ever heard from the killer by witnesses, as much of his speech was too low for the witnesses to pick up:

**1**. "I was scared I'd be forgotten."

2. "I love you, my master."

3. "Forgive me."

"Forgive me" was the second last thing which was said over the PA - Albino was then thrown out of a ground floor window, somehow making it through the barrier. He was already dead; strangled with the chain of the large pendant he always wore around his neck.

The Boy replied to the murderer with one very clear word, one final word:

"Burn."

The Boy With the Tri–Coloured Hair was now al**one** in the building with the **killer**.

* * *

_"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." – Exodus 20:4 , The Second Commandment._

* * *

**Notes:**

**1. **It depends on your theory, but the coloring may or may not actually be important. So you know, this figurine looks the exact same as Arkana's/Pandora's 'evil' Dark Magician - it's not too hard to find a picture of it, and I recommend you do find a picture. I'll hint you in the direction of one of the five theories: Take a moment to think about the various owners of the Millennium Ring, while staring at Pandora's Dark Magician. You might just notice something.

UAB

(Unnecessary Author's Babble):

What the hell happened here? What was going on? Why exactly did Mahad randomly start murdering everyone? How did he come into this world? Who did he butcher, anyway?

…No, I'm not going to tell you any of that. Aren't ambiguous stories fun?

Yeah, so I finally got to write a fairly ambiguous story, which I've been itching to do for a while. I have been told before that I've accidentally written something creepy, but on this occasion went out of my way to do so - so yay, two things I've never done before!The material went quite a way out of my comfort zone, and the story likely confused the heck out of most (if not all) of those who read this – but hey, I guess that's what improvement's for.

Insert a cheerful 'First time for everything' quote here, please.


End file.
